Could the main conflict be simply between players who...? + solution?

Could the main conflict be simply between players who want to engage deeply with the game and players who don't? With conflict I mean all those polarizing threads were players discuss about poe 2 and clearly want the game to be something very different than the other sides preferences.


group 1 would be the players who want to engage deeply with the game: think about the passive tree and which ones are the best support gems to use, want to be challenged, want to learn how to deal with boss attack patterns and mechanics, enjoy build crafting and experimenting with new skills, put the time in to figure out the crafting system, read all the tooltips that explain game mechanics, want to have engaging moment to moment combat

group 2 would be players who I imagine coming home after a hard work day: they want to have a more relaxed experience where they can just kill groups of monsters without too much effort, they don't want to put in 20 minutes to get a build to work they just want to equip some skills that look cool and have that work, want the game to feel more like a power fantasy than an actual challenge, here a boss fight can be appreciated for feeling epic, but that feeling more created by the developers: by the good graphics and visual boss design, the epic music and good loot that dropped than by the player engagement, maybe they talk with their friends or watch a netflix show while playing poe 2
the important quality of this group is that it's players do not engage as deeply with the game

Easy to imagine how these different preferences could collide, isn't it?


I think the bad direction poe 2 could develop could be called negative polarization: trying to accomodate both player groups, but constantly making the game more for one group at the expense of the other - which group is prefered can change from decision to decision.
Better are design decisions that create more seperate spaces for each of the groups to enjoy, like different difficulty levels, less and more complex classes, premade builds offered by the game or imported and deep passive tree node choices, actually challenging endgame maps and relaxed farm content (both T15), the option to have a power fantasy for a while and the option to exclude game breaking stuff, playing through a challenge mode campaign and having an easy starting and slowly becoming harder first time experience during the campaign, figuring out the game by oneself through experimentation and tooltips and having a lot of handholding (but not both for the same player), monsters having all kinds of mechanics one needs to pay attention to and another difficulty were those still visually happen, but can be largely ignored...
This would be a new approach to video game design (at least I haven't seen it much so far): instead of designing the game for a single target group or overlapping target groups, could it be designed for multiple target groups with opposing / mutually exclusive preferences - in a way that they each can say "I can fully play the game how I like it / according to my preferences".

Baffling that you mention you haven't seen this done before, just look at how this turned out in things like d4, or d3 before it.

As soon as you add actual difficult modes to your game with corresponding rewards, casuals will demand that they be made accessible to them as well, or else you're gatekeeping.

That is the reason why normal/heroic (and mythic past 1st month of progression) raids in WoW have been made trivial, same for max level rewards from m+, or any other form of 'difficult' content.
Same goes for torment tiers in d3/4 - this used to add actual difficulty to the game in early d3 days, now it is a pointless slider that is expected to be maxed out on day 1 by everyone and their grandma.

A developer needs to choose whether they want their entire game to be easily accessible to pretty much everyone, or limit max rewards to those willing to put in the effort.
There is no middle ground, because once you give the crybabies a finger, they will be chewing on your whole arm in no time.

That is what's happening with this game currently, and by my estimation the potential revenue stream coming from low effort players is going to win in the end, but I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong on this.

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arandan#3174 wrote:

Baffling that you mention you haven't seen this done before, just look at how this turned out in things like d4, or d3 before it.

As soon as you add actual difficult modes to your game with corresponding rewards, casuals will demand that they be made accessible to them as well, or else you're gatekeeping.

That is the reason why normal/heroic (and mythic past 1st month of progression) raids in WoW have been made trivial, same for max level rewards from m+, or any other form of 'difficult' content.
Same goes for torment tiers in d3/4 - this used to add actual difficulty to the game in early d3 days, now it is a pointless slider that is expected to be maxed out on day 1 by everyone and their grandma.

A developer needs to choose whether they want their entire game to be easily accessible to pretty much everyone, or limit max rewards to those willing to put in the effort.
There is no middle ground, because once you give the crybabies a finger, they will be chewing on your whole arm in no time.

That is what's happening with this game currently, and by my estimation the potential revenue stream coming from low effort players is going to win in the end, but I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong on this.

Well if you make the game for the low effort players, you'll appease them in the short-run, but the high-effort ones get bored and leave.

Low-effort players have the numbers and use it to act like their associated revenue is the big-swinging dick that directs game design towards their desires but the only reason they get to feel powerful in the first place is because they can stand on the shoulders of the high-effort players who make their builds for them and put in all the effort to understand how to be powerful.

You build for the high-effort players, you get more powerful builds, more variety of builds, and that makes it even more accessible for low-effort players.

I'm pretty sure GGG's figured out the formula.

That is wishful thinking.
How many tier lists and build guides are there for last epoch, or diablo 4, even though neither of those titles actually need them?

The game doesn't need to target high effort players - or even be good for that matter - in order for streamers and 'content creators' to milk money out of it. All that matters to them is that it is played and gets the views/clicks.

Contrary to all the memes, diablo 4 is still very popular and blizzard, or any other AAA developer are not completely daft. They know what they're doing when they dumb their games down to the lowest common denominator.
Lately GGG have been showing a similar pattern of behaviour.